Under conventional approaches, assets (e.g., shipping containers) may need to be identified, located, and/or monitored. Typically, barcodes, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, Global Positioning System (GPS) tags, and a variety of sensors are often emplaced on assets to identify, locate, and/or monitor assets. Traditionally, small computing devices are used to manage and record data from emplaced sensors in order to provide monitoring (e.g., “full time, real time” monitoring). Various wireless communication technologies have been used to deliver autonomous operation for assets, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and various cellular standards. However, these wireless technologies suffer from several technological problems which make them unsuitable for most asset monitoring applications. For example, cellular and Wi-Fi require infrastructure to enable communication, and the communicating assets cannot communicate unless they are within range of base stations. Others technologies (e.g., Bluetooth) do not have sufficient range for ubiquitous deployment. Furthermore, current technologies do not scale to handling tens of thousands of assets that may be in a single locale, and also suffer from excessive energy consumption, which may render them unusable for most battery powered applications.